Lots backlogged to say on this bike for one big reason...
The TQ motor died during a lunch ride in late June. This failure requires some details to capture which backburnered covering this bike even though I'm still using it heavily.
It took a month and a half to "fix" (completely replace the motor) mostly from waiting on the North American parts distributor to get a new motor for the bike shop to swap in. I purchased this bike used with about 20 miles of usage by the original owner so I ethically decided to fully eat the cost of the new motor and labor which totalled around $1.3k... Ouch. At least I'll have a warranty on the new motor for two years. Something to be aware of if you ever buy a used e-bike.
I wanted to use a Scott bike shop to handle this rework in case specific mounting bolts or Scott parts etc were needed. Like most bigger bike stores my impression of them was rather meh. Nothing went wrong per say but they seemed like a bike store way more focused on sales than support if you get my gist... Not worth dwelling on but I would have had other issues rolling up to my trusted bike shop to get support on a TQ motor that they don't have in any bikes they sell. This likely will get worse in the coming years with competing ebike systems which all require different support tools, software, and vendor accounts.
Regarding the failure itself there are more background aspects to get into than most bike failures that are mechanical systems only. Some of these likely didnt contribute to the failure but I think its important to detail my line of thinking to better cover e-bike ownership. The old motor user input powermeter always read fairly low compared to my many other bikes with powermeters. After sustained use if I went off user applied power then back on sometimes the motor's added input would stutter as if it was engaging and then disengaging. When this happens I always stop pedaling for a few seconds before slowly ramping my input back up. This stuttering motor output happened more often in the weeks leading into the failure. Inherently an ebike motor's applied power is a bit delayed so they don't deal well with surging rider power. With TQ you can set how fast or slow the motor responds and I always have it at default (slow). The firmware was also updated for the first time around a week before the failure in order to support an external battery which was not in use during the failure.
Now getting into the actual failure itself which again is captured on video
here. That day was one of the hottest of the year at above 100F (37.8C) and was the last climb of an hour long ride all in max assist mode as always. The failure happened while going over
this dip in the road which I've done around a hundred times with this bike. I rode this like I would with any bike which is to come off power breifly and raise slightly out of the saddle to soak up the bump before coming back on power. This doesnt work well with ebike motors rather binary on or off power behavior and love of steady power levels so I no longer ride this way with the new motor. Can the user mittigate this? Sure but kind of sucks that a motor can kill itself from normal riding behaviours ingrained in us from years of bike riding.
The new motor came with yet newer firmware and reads higher than my other bikes for user input power. It also is much easier to sustain 28mph with the new motor even at the same reported user power levels. I don't fully know what to think about this... Was the old motor slowly eating itself? Part of this is the new motor can sustain 300w output while the last one could touch 300w but usually was below 250w assist and reported a less steady number. With this comes more battery usage with the new motor along with cumulative battery degridation but this post is long enough so that is a topic for another day.
A
t a high level I am very happy with this bike inspite of the negative write up on this issue that I am attempting to capture thoroughly for the community.
These ebikes are still very early adopter products where you are basically a beta tester. I love tinkering with bikes though so I don't mind that side as much as most would. This bike has replaced my car for 8 out of 10 commutes to work each week and I've even extended my daily commute to go over the bike hills instead of the more direct path to work. With that said
I couldn't recommend a performance road ebike as anyone's only bike.... yet.
More to come. The bike was as light as it ever will be and now is getting heavier for wet riding. Also there is a rush of stuff to try before I xplr something new.
During the time I ran the broken clamp I only commuted with the bike on fairly flat roads.
